The Australian Bush* 421 



suspense to the shooter j the gun is quietly raised, but the birds at 

 first are too far, or not well packed j however, at length he gets 

 three of four in a line, and the heavy boom of the gun breaks the 

 stillness of night, reverberating over the swamp with a hundred 

 echoes. It may be that some scores of birds were feeding on the 

 lagoon out of sight, which now rise like a clap of thunder, and the 

 air is disturbed by the wings and the cries of the birds as they fly 

 round the shooter's head. His quick ear can well distinguish the 

 different birds by their varied call-notes the soft, musical whoop of 

 the black swan, the sharp, loud quack of the black duck, the hoarse 

 croak of the mountain-duck, the snort of the shoveller, and the 

 shrill call of the teal, are all familiar to him ; and as he gathers up 

 his dead birds, he hears the ducks pitching again in various parts of 

 the lagoon, giving him promise of a goodly harvest by morning. 

 When the dead birds are collected, the pipe is lit, the gun charged, 

 and he quietly settles himself down in his rushy screen for another 

 shot. The early part of the evening is best for this sport : the birds 

 leave the feeding-grounds about midnight, often go out to sea, if the 

 lagoon is on the coast, and return again a little before daybreak, when 

 they often pack on the bank of the lagoon. So, in punt-shooting, 

 the evening and the morning shots are those upon which the shooter 

 principally depends. Where the birds are feeding well upon ground 

 which has been but little disturbed, flight-shooting is the best and 

 surest game of any with a shoulder-gun, and there is some little differ- 

 ence between flight-shooting out here and at home, where the shooter 

 has to sit for hours, often in sleet and drizzling rain, his teeth chat- 

 tering, and his fingers so cold that he can scarcely pull the trigger. 

 Here a good pea-jacket will keep the shooter warm on the coldest 

 night, and though I have occasionally used gloves, I never really 

 wanted them. The best seasons for flight-shooting are the autumn 

 and early winter. In the months of March and April, 1858, my 

 old mate killed upwards of a hundred couple of birds, principally 

 black duck, at night, with his own gun, in one small water-hole 

 close to the coast. This is the only kind of shooting in the colony 

 for which a man really requires water-boots. As the birds generally 



